Skeletal animation or rigging is a technique in computer animation in which a character (or other articulated object) is represented in two parts: a polygonal or parametric mesh representation of the surface of the object, and a hierarchical set of interconnected parts (called joints or bones, and collectively forming the skeleton), a virtual armature used to animate (pose and keyframe) the mesh. While this technique is often used to animate humans and other organic figures, it only serves to make the animation process more intuitive, and the same technique can be used to control the deformation of any object—such as a door, a spoon, a building, or a galaxy. When the animated object is more general than, for example, a humanoid character, the set of "bones" may not be hierarchical or interconnected, but simply represent a higher-level description of the motion of the part of mesh it is influencing.
95-476: A VTuber ( Japanese : ブイチューバー , Hepburn : BuiChūbā ) or virtual YouTuber ( バーチャルユーチューバー , bācharu YūChūbā ) is an online entertainer who uses a virtual avatar generated using computer graphics . Real-time motion capture software or technology are often—but not always—used to capture movement. The digital trend originated in Japan in the mid-2010s, and has become an international online phenomenon in
190-599: A large language model attached to a speech synthesis system to interact with her audience. In February 2024, Anycolor faced criticism over the treatment of its talent, following the termination of its contract with Nijisanji EN streamer Selen Tatsuki. The company cited "repeated breaches of contract", "misleading statements on social platforms", and actions causing payment delays for commissions to fan creators. In subsequent statements (as independent VTuber Dokibird), she stated that she had been hospitalized in December 2023 as
285-421: A VTuber tag for streams as part of a wider expansion of its tag system. In July 2021, Gawr Gura —a member of Hololive's first English branch—overtook Kizuna Ai as the most-subscribed VTuber on YouTube. Cover's CEO Motoaki "Yagoo" Tanigo was selected as one of the Japan's Top 20 Entrepreneurs by Forbes Japan in its January 2022 issue. The following month, in the midst of a subathon event, Ironmouse accumulated
380-942: A VTuber trend in Japan, and it spurred the establishment of specialized agencies to promote them, including major ones such as Hololive Production , Nijisanji , and VShojo . Fan translations and foreign-language VTubers have marked a rise in the trend's international popularity. Virtual YouTubers have appeared in domestic advertising campaigns and have broken livestream-related world records. VTubers are online entertainers who are typically YouTubers or live streamers . They use avatars created with programs such as Live2D , portraying characters designed by online artists. VTubers are not bound by physical limitations, and many of them engage in activities that are unconstrained by their real-world identity. Some VTubers, particularly those from marginalized communities, choose to use avatars to reflect their online identity for personal comfort and safety reasons. Transgender VTubers may use their avatars as
475-637: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
570-706: A cameo appearance in an episode of Yo-kai Watch that aired in March 2023. In November 2023, Arashi member Kazunari Ninomiya , who's been working with Puzzle & Dragons since 2014 (with Arashi, and from 2021 as himself), became a VTuber for the latest CM campaign. In July 2024, Los Angeles Dodgers held a promotional night with Hololive Production during a game against the Milwaukee Brewers , featuring Hololive talents Usada Pekora, Gawr Gura, and Hoshimachi Suisei. Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] )
665-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
760-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
855-434: A hiatus from social media activity. In September 2024, Vtuber Ironmouse hit over 320,000 active paid subscribers on Twitch, surpassing the previous record holder, Kai Cenat . Due to their popularity, companies and organizations have used virtual YouTubers as a method of advertising or bringing attention to a product or service. When SoftBank announced the release of the iPhone XS and XS Max in 2018, Kizuna AI appeared at
950-484: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
1045-435: A matrix to the vertex, it is scaled by its corresponding weight. This algorithm is called matrix-palette skinning or linear-blend skinning, because the set of bone transformations (stored as transform matrices ) form a palette for the skin vertex to choose from. Skeletal animation is the standard way to animate characters or mechanical objects for a prolonged period of time. It is commonly used by video game artists and in
SECTION 10
#17327866376271140-585: A means to better reflect their preferred presentation to their audience. VTubers often portray themselves as a kayfabe character, not unlike professional wrestling ; Mace , a WWE wrestler who himself began streaming on Twitch as a VTuber in 2021, remarked that the two professions were "literally the same thing". VTubers are associated with Japanese popular culture and aesthetics, such as anime and manga , and moe anthropomorphism with human or non-human traits. Some VTubers use anthropomorphic avatars, non-human characters such as animals. A VTuber's avatar
1235-513: A platform to support that". This followed Wright Flyer Live Entertainment's parent company Gree, Inc. 's ¥10 billion ($ 89.35 million) investment in VTubers, as well as a ¥10 billion sales target by 2020. On June 24, 2019, VTuber Kaguya Luna, in collaboration with Nissin Foods to advertise its Yakisoba UFO noodles, held a live stream with a smartphone attached to a helium balloon. By
1330-469: A process called skinning. In the most common case of a polygonal mesh character, the bone is associated with a group of vertices ; for example, in a model of a human being, the bone for the thigh would be associated with the vertices making up the polygons in the model's thigh. Portions of the character's skin can normally be associated with multiple bones, each one having a scaling factors called vertex weights , or blend weights . The movement of skin near
1425-457: A result of "bullying from within", and she had been in a "toxic and poor environment for numerous months that led to my breaking point". The claims regarding payments for commissions were also refuted by artists who had worked on content for Tatsuki—who had paid them personally. Criticism over Nijisanji's handling and response to the controversy resulted in declines to Anycolor's stock price, multiple Nijisanji streamers announcing that they would take
1520-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
1615-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
1710-586: A total revenue of US$ 26,229,911 (roughly half of which being viewer donations). At the same time, the popularity of VTubers continued to rise on Twitch , with a host of several notable English-speaking VTubers such as VShojo members Projekt Melody and Ironmouse . Pokimane also experimented with avatar-based streams using a model commissioned from a VTuber artist. In September 2020, Anycolor created an "Aggressive Acts and Slander Countermeasure Team" to offer counselling to victims of harassment and take legal measures against perpetrators of harassment, specifically
1805-680: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
1900-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of
1995-448: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
SECTION 20
#17327866376272090-527: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
2185-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
2280-701: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
2375-466: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
2470-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
2565-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
2660-755: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
2755-444: Is making our characters able to move. The process of rigging is we take that digital sculpture, and we start building the skeleton, the muscles, and we attach the skin to the character, and we also create a set of animation controls, which our animators use to push and pull the body around. This technique constructs a series of bones (which need not correspond to any real-world anatomical feature), sometimes also referred to as rigging in
2850-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
2945-498: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
VTuber - Misplaced Pages Continue
3040-665: Is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as
3135-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
3230-459: Is typically animated using a webcam and software, which captures the streamer's motions, expressions, and mouth movements , and maps them to a two- or three-dimensional model. Both free and paid programs have been developed for loading models and performing motion capture , with some capable of being used without a webcam (albeit with pre-determined animations), and some also supporting virtual reality hardware, or hand tracking devices such as
3325-689: Is typically used to rig two-dimensional models constructed from drawn textures, while programs such as VRoid Studio can be used to create three-dimensional models. Commissioned models can cost as high as US$ 2,000 depending on their level of detail. By contrast, some VTubers, colloquially known as "PNGTubers" (in reference to the PNG image format), use static sprites as opposed to a rigged model. Major VTubers are often employed by talent agencies , with business models influenced by those used by Japanese idol agencies. Streamers are employed by an agency (sometimes via open auditions) to portray characters developed by
3420-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
3515-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
3610-567: The 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo). In June 2022, Hololive member Inugami Korone became the official brand ambassador for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise in Japan. She would later appear in the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 film as the voice actress for one of the characters in the Japanese dub, and Korone-themed downloadable content would be released for the game Sonic Frontiers . She also made
3705-563: The Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered
3800-612: The Fukuoka PayPay Dome's videoboard. In August 2018, Wright Flyer Live Entertainment released a mobile application allowing VTubers to live stream videos while monetizing them and connecting with their viewers. In a news conference in Tokyo, the head of Wright Flyer Live Entertainment stated, "just increasing the number [of VTubers] is not that effective. We want them to keep on doing their activities. [To do that], gaining fans and monetization are essential. So, we are providing
3895-516: The Japan National Tourism Organization . Kizuna Ai's popularity can be attributed to the oversaturation of traditional webcam YouTubers and for aspects of characters that the audience would not expect. For example, despite having a friendly appearance, Kizuna Ai often swears in her videos when she gets frustrated while playing a game. Kizuna AI's sudden popularity sparked a VTuber trend. Between May and mid-July 2018,
VTuber - Misplaced Pages Continue
3990-462: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
4085-508: The Leap Motion Controller . Some programs offload motion tracking to external phone cameras via mobile apps to save system resources, and take advantage of hardware features (such as Face ID on iPhone ) that can enable more precise motion capture. In 2022, VTube Studio released an update allowing for AI-accelerated facial motion capture using Nvidia RTX graphics cards. The proprietary animation software Live2D
4180-514: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
4275-738: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
4370-806: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
4465-597: The intellectual property of the agency; former corporate VTubers may transition to streaming independently under an alternate persona, with their past identity treated as an open secret . Some agencies and groups, such as U.S.-based VShojo , focus primarily on recruiting and promoting existing independent VTubers as a collective team, rather than hiring streamers to portray proprietary characters. On February 12, 2010, visual novel maker Nitroplus began uploading videos to its YouTube channel featuring an animated 3D version of its mascot Super Sonico , who would usually talk to
4560-527: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
4655-721: The 2020s. In 2020, Japanese VTubers Ayapan and Jajami were invited by the Brazilian embassy in Tokyo, Japan , in November to present their content made for the Brazilian public and how VTuber works, where they had a meeting with Ambassador Eduardo Paes Saboia, being the first contact of VTubers with a Brazilian authority. In 2021, Hololive English member Gawr Gura made a cameo appearance in an anime-themed ad by American fast food chain Taco Bell (which premiered to coincide with
4750-484: The 2020s. A majority of VTubers are English- and Japanese-speaking YouTubers or live streamers who use avatar designs. By 2020, there were more than 10,000 active VTubers. Although the term is an allusion to the video platform YouTube , they also use websites such as Niconico , Twitch , Facebook , Twitter , and Bilibili . The first entertainer to use the phrase "virtual YouTuber", Kizuna AI , began creating content on YouTube in late 2016. Her popularity sparked
4845-490: The FaceRig indie software launched on Indiegogo as an EU crowdfunding project, and later that year it was released on Steam , becoming the first software suite that enabled live avatars at home via face motion capture that started being actively used on streaming websites and YouTube. The Live2D software module enabling 2D avatars and was added one year later in 2015 in collaboration with Live2D, Inc. In late 2016, Kizuna AI ,
SECTION 50
#17327866376274940-515: The Hedgehog and his Japanese voice actor Jun'ichi Kanemaru ), and anime streaming service Crunchyroll (which launched a YouTube channel for its mascot Crunchyroll-Hime in October 2021). The Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks baseball team has two VTuber mascots, named Takamine Umi (also known as Hawk Kannon Sea) and Aritaka Hina, both unveiled in 2020. They have their own YouTube channel and their own Twitter accounts. Occasionally, they make appearances on
5035-486: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
5130-736: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
5225-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
5320-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
5415-541: The audience about herself or about releases related to the company. On June 13, 2011, UK-based Japanese vlogger Ami Yamato uploaded her first video, which featured an animated, virtual avatar speaking to the camera. In 2012, Japanese company Weathernews Inc. debuted a Vocaloid -styled character called Weatheroid Type A Airi on SOLiVE24, a 24-hour weather live stream on Nico Nico Douga , on YouTube and their website. In 2014, Airi got her own solo program every Thursday and began live broadcasting with motion capture . In 2014
5510-574: The beginning of 2018, Anycolor Inc. (then known as Ichikara) founded the VTuber agency Nijisanji . Nijisanji helped popularise the use of Live2D models instead of the prior focus on 3D models as well as the shift towards livestreaming instead of edited video and clips that was the standard for VTubers like Kizuna Ai. Cover Corporation, a company that was originally developing augmented and virtual reality software, shifted its focus to VTubers by establishing Hololive . After their initial success in Japan,
5605-419: The company, which are then commercialized via merchandising and other promotional appearances, as well as traditional revenue streams such as monetization of their videos , and viewer donations. Another holdover from idol groups is the use of the term "graduation" to refer to a VTuber retiring their character and/or leaving an agency on amicable terms. In agencies, a VTuber's character and other assets are often
5700-578: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
5795-434: The end of the stream, the smartphone reached an altitude of 30 kilometres (19 mi) above sea level and was noted by Guinness World Records as being the live stream recorded at the highest altitude, breaking the previous record of 18.42 kilometres (11.45 mi). Good Smile Company has begun producing nendoroids of Kizuna Ai in 2018, with a full push for various Japanese and international VTuber PVC-made statues since
SECTION 60
#17327866376275890-450: The event and promoted the products on her channel. Some organizations and companies have employed their own VTuber characters as mascots within marketing. These include the government of Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture (which developed the character of Ibaraki Hiyori), the streaming service Netflix (which developed the character N-ko to appear in videos promoting its anime content), Sega (who planned to have in-character streams with Sonic
5985-412: The first VTuber to achieve breakout popularity, made her debut on YouTube. She was the first to coin and use the term "virtual YouTuber". Created by digital production company Activ8 and voice-acted by Nozomi Kasuga, Kizuna AI created a sense of "real intimacy" with fans, as she was responsive to their questions. Within ten months, she had over two million subscribers and later became a culture ambassador of
6080-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure
6175-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
6270-599: The growth of VTubers into a mainstream phenomenon. Searches on Google for VTuber related content increased over 2020, leading towards the September 2020 launch of Hololive's English branch. In August 2020, seven of the ten largest Super Chat earners of all time on YouTube were VTubers, including Hololive member Kiryu Coco [ ja ] at number one, who by that time had earned approximately ¥ 85 million (approximately US$ 800,000 in 2020). VTubers accounted for 38% of YouTube's 300 most profitable channels, with
6365-428: The influence of some animation controller. A rig is generally composed of both forward kinematics and inverse kinematics parts that may interact with each other. Skeletal animation is referring to the forward kinematics part of the rig, where a complete set of bone configurations identifies a unique pose. Each bone in the skeleton is associated with some portion of the character's visual representation (the mesh ) in
6460-519: The joints of two bones, can therefore be influenced by both bones. In most state-of-the-art graphical engines, the skinning process is done on the GPU by a shader program . For a polygonal mesh, each vertex can have a blend weight for each bone. To calculate the final position of the vertex, a transformation matrix is created for each bone which, when applied to the vertex, first puts the vertex in bone space then puts it back into mesh space. After applying
6555-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,
6650-458: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
6745-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
6840-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
6935-399: The largest number of active paid subscriptions of all streamers on the platform at that point in time, although still behind an overall record previously set by Ludwig . According to data provided by parent company Amazon , VTubing content on Twitch grew by 467% in 2021 compared with a year earlier. In December 2022, the independent VTuber Neuro-sama gained attention on Twitch for its use of
7030-452: The noun sense. Each bone has a three-dimensional transformation from the default bind pose (which includes its position, scale and orientation), and an optional parent bone. The bones therefore form a hierarchy . The full transform of a child node is the product of its parent transform and its own transform. So moving a thigh-bone will move the lower leg too. As the character is animated, the bones change their transformation over time, under
7125-401: The number of active VTubers increased from 2,000 to 4,000. Kaguya Luna [ ja ] and Mirai Akari [ ja ] followed Kizuna as the second and third most popular VTubers, with 750,000 and 625,000 subscribers respectively. Nekomiya Hinata [ ja ] and Siro [ ja ] , two other early VTubers, each gained followings of 500,000 in six months. In
7220-464: The online harassment plaguing the Japanese entertainment industry. This announcement came in the wake of Hololive's VTuber Mano Aloe's retirement after only two weeks of activity due to online harassment. YouTube's 2020 Culture and Trends report highlights VTubers as one of the notable trends of that year, with 1.5 billion views per month by October. On March 30, 2021, Kizuna AI was chosen as one of Asia's top 60 influencers. In May 2021, Twitch added
7315-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
7410-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
7505-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
7600-481: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
7695-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
7790-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
7885-817: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
7980-481: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
8075-554: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Skeletal animation The technique
8170-786: The trend began to expand internationally via their appeal to the anime and manga fandom . Agencies like Hololive and Nijisanji created branches in China, South Korea, Indonesia, and India, as well as English-language branches targeting a global audience. Meanwhile, independent VTubers began to appear in many countries, from Japan to the United States. In July 2018, VTubers had a collective subscriber count of 12.7 million, and more than 720 million total views. By January 2020, there were over 10,000 VTubers. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an overall increase in viewership of video game live streaming in general in 2020, which helped contribute to
8265-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
8360-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
8455-480: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
8550-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
8645-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
8740-539: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
8835-735: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
8930-422: Was introduced in 1988 by Nadia Magnenat Thalmann , Richard Laperrière, and Daniel Thalmann . This technique is used in virtually all animation systems where simplified user interfaces allows animators to control often complex algorithms and a huge amount of geometry; most notably through inverse kinematics and other "goal-oriented" techniques. As described in an instructional article by Josh Petty: Rigging
9025-474: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
#626373